While the bungling Chancellor LOST Britain’s top AAA credit rating, we can reveal he’s GAINED himself an aristocratic new home.

Now Mr Osborne will be able to ponder future disasters away from it all in a two-storey building near Crag Hall, a sprawling £4million country estate which is owned by his long-term family friend Lord Derby.

The Tory was due to spend this weekend at the Cheshire house after quietly moving in. Then rating agency Moody’s downgraded Britain’s AAA rating to AA1 for the first time since 1978, and he was forced to stay in London and face a BBC interview to ­defend his reputation.

But he vowed to stick to his economic strategy, warning that “tough measures” were needed to cut debt.

The revelation that he has moved into a new home while the country suffers will heap more pressure on him.

Labour’s deputy chairman Tom Watson said yesterday: “The cruel truth of Osborne’s economic decisions is while the majority ­suffer an erosion in their living standards, he is living the life of an ­aristocrat.”

Mr Osborne started renting the ­country house, worth £750,000, after making £450,000 profit on the sale of his ­constituency home in Cheshire – as ­revealed by our sister paper last year.

And he has wasted no time settling in. His daughter recently appeared as a “Rose Queen” in a festival held in the grounds of Lord Derby’s estate.

He has also been a guest at falconry events at Crag Hall and is a regular at the Crag Inn pub in Wildboarclough where he lunches most Sundays.

One local said yesterday: “He has ­really taken to village life and often talks about how brilliant it is to come to the country and enjoy some peace and quiet.

“We expected George and his family here over the weekend. But he has obviously has other things on his plate.”

Fuel and food prices are set to spiral to a new high ahead of more financial pain in Mr Osborne’s Budget on March 20. Labour MP John Mann, a member of the influential Treasury Select ­Committee, warned Mr Osborne’s future was “in grave peril”.

Mr Mann said: “He is unlikely to ­survive and his ambition to be Prime Minister is undoubtedly now dead and buried. He is a busted flush.”

Other ratings agencies are also ­expected to follow Moody’s, which warned that British growth would “remain sluggish over the next few years”.

But Mr Osborne yesterday refused to change course, rejecting demands to pump billions into new schemes to build houses, power stations and roads in an effort to boost jobs and the economy.

He told the BBC Britain’s situation would get much worse if the Government abandoned its “commitment to deal with the debt problem”. Mr Osborne said: “We’ve got to take tough measures to do that and I think people understand that.”

But Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said there was now no doubt he could not be trusted with the country’s ­finances.

He said: “He’s like a 19th Century doctor saying ‘let’s bleed the patient more’. The medicine’s not working. More medicine is not going to do the trick.”

Credit ratings assess a government’s ability to repay its loans and help determine the ­interest rate governments pay to borrow.

All three major ­credit agencies last year put the UK on a “negative outlook” leading to our downgrade on Friday night. Now, Germany and Canada are the only major economies to have a top AAA rating. America and France have both lost theirs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes yesterday cut the odds on Mr Osborne being fired before the General Election to just 2/1.

Voters across the country also hit out at the Chancellor. Retired hairdresser Jo Jones, 67, of Newcastle upon Tyne, said: “He has taken this country into such a state that it will take some getting out of now. It’s very disappointing to lose the AAA ­rating. We used to be a great country.”

Mum Charlotte Rooks, 29, a waitress from Cardiff, said: “Osborne bet everything on keeping the AAA rating and he lost. He needs to do the decent thing and go before he does any more damage to the economy.” Retired seaman Colin Johnson, 81, of Liverpool, said: “It’s time for all the Tories to go, the whole lot of them.”